AKP candidate elected as Turkey's parliament speaker

Turkey's parliament has elected ?smet Y?lmaz, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate and incumbent defence minister, as its speaker with "covert support" from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
The first two rounds of voting were held on June 30, but none of the four candidates gathered the required support of 367 members of parliament in the 550-seat assembly.

The third round of voting was held on July 1 and no candidate received the required 276 votes to be elected. In the fouth round wherein the candidate with the most total votes will be elected speaker, Y?lmaz received led with 258 votes.

Speaking to reporters after his party's group meeting on July 1, MHP head Devlet Bahçeli repeated his vow that the MHP's parliamentary group would refuse to vote in the same bloc as the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in the third and fourth round of voting.

After the MHP's candidate, former Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) head Ekmeleddin ?hsano?lu, was eliminated in the third round, MHP deputies apparently did what Bahçeli said. the Republican People's Party's (CHP) candidate, former party head Deniz Baykal, received only 182 votes against Y?lmaz in the fourth round, while 78 invalid and 29 empty votes were cast. Meanwhile, only some HDP deputies voted for Baykal while others cast empty votes.

Political analysts have labelled Bahçeli's move as covert support for the AKP candidate, despite the MHP leader's stinging criticism of AKP co-founder and current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.

Coalition negotiations to begin

The AKP lost its single-party majority in the June 7 parliamentary election. It now has 258 seats in parliament, while the CHP has 132 seats and the MHP and HDP both have...